School Year 2014-15

Doorknob"Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction." Check out the "Getting Started" page for a summer head start.

Contact Information

Should a student or parent need to contact me for any reason I can be reached by phone during school hours @ 226-5688. I can also be reached email (use the contact page on this website.)

I’m generally available for extra help during lunch in room 403 and after school from 3:30 –4:30. Additional tutoring help may be arranged by the student with an appointment scheduled and agreed upon by the instructor. Like many undertakings in life, you will find that you will get out of this class whatever you put into it. I am a facilitator, I cannot force you to learn anything. Your success in this class will come from your own individual desire to learn, to explore the living world around you to discover how it works. As the instructor, I will try to make the subject interesting, understandable, engaging, and thought provoking, while focusing on the content standards of the class. Your job as a student is to follow the guidelines and rules I have outlined and do your best work and continue to develop your sense of wonder and life-long love of learning.

Course Description: Goals for AP Environmental Science

The goal of the Advanced Placement Environmental Science course (AP Environmental Science, or APES) is to provide students with the scientific principles, concepts, and methodologies required to understand the interrelationships of the natural world, to identify and analyze environmental problems, both natural and human-made, to evaluate the relative risks associated with these problems, and to examine alternative solutions for resolving and/or preventing them. Environmental Science is interdisciplinary; it embraces a wide variety of topics from different areas of study (e.g. biology, chemistry, earth science, geography), yet there are several major unifying themes that cut across the many topics included in the study of environmental science.AP Environmental Science has a significant laboratory and field investigation component. The goal of this component is to complement the classroom portion of the course by allowing students to learn about the environment through firsthand observations. Experiences both in the laboratory and in the field provide students with important opportunities to test concepts and principles that are introduced in the classroom, to explore specific problems with a depth not easily achieved otherwise, and to gain an awareness of the importance of confounding variables that exist in the “real world.” Examples of investigations include: collecting and analyzing water and soil samples, conducting long term studies on a local ecosystem or environmental problem, analyzing real data sets, and visiting local public facilities such as a water-treatment plant. The laboratory and field component will challenge students’ abilities to:

Critically observe environmental systems

Develop and conduct well-designed experiments

Utilize appropriate techniques and instrumentation

Analyze and interpret data, including appropriate statistical and graphical presentations

Think analytically and apply concepts to the solution of environmental problems

Make conclusions and evaluate their quality and validity

Propose further questions for study

Communicate accurately and meaningfully about observations and conclusions.

For a full description of the AP environmental Science Course Description, visit APES